Food and Fancies, Wine and Words

The Israeli voting booth: archaic or effective?

We vote for a political party, not a candidate, the ranks of which are chosen within the parties. Every party has an alphabet letter or letters (some symbolic or spelling out words or names, others seemingly random). These letters are printed on little slips of paper. You are given an envelope, you choose a piece of paper, insert it, seal the envelope, and drop it into a slot in a box. Easy.

Today I was presented with no less than 35 choices. It’s simple in a way, but a bit daunting to be presented with such a choice. Doesn’t it look like a board game? Or Scrabble? I’m told this was always the system. Avoids all the “hanging chad” and computerized voting machine problems. The only real way your vote can be voided is if you place more than one paper in the envelope. No pesky representatives from local, state, and national districts, no judges to choose, just one party, one paper. My choice: Meretz.

The 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament) are then allocated according to the percentage breakdown of the votes. Then comes the dirty dirty wheeling and dealing between parties in order to form a ruling coalition, eg “bribing” religious parties with minister of transportation (no buses on the sabbath) and education, etc etc.

Luckily – we got a day off work! Something other countries should implement. Certainly affects the turnout. And what a lovely day we got – sunny, 25 degrees! If only we got a vacation in the middle of every week. Brunch is so much sweeter on holiday. I especially love to eat bacon unapologetically in Israel.

BTW I did have a moment’s hesitation when I was in the voting booth this morning. So many small parties vying for your attention. Maybe we should have a Eurovision-like elimination round before the actual elections? :)

My only question about the voting system is, is it possible
to determine which party is doing best by the amount of slips left
in their place? If one pile is very low (or out) of slips, doesn’t
that mean they are getting a lot of votes? This is why exit pols
are not allowed here until the pols close, or something like that.
How long does it take to tally the votes and determine the
“winners”? Ann From: Irne Sharon Hodes
<comment-reply@wordpress.com> Reply-To: “\”Irne
Sharon Hodes\””
<comment+eq0m85gmw9s2hlf1hy2v_6u@comment.wordpress.com>
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 8:16 AM To: Ann Seskin
<anncat@bu.edu> Subject: [New post] The Israeli
voting booth: archaic or effective? Irne Sharon Hodes posted: “This
is what an Israeli voting booth looks like. We vote for a political
party, not a candidate, the ranks of which are chosen within the
parties. Every party has an alphabet letter or letters (some
symbolic or spelling out words or names, others seemingl”

They don’t count slips left. It’s not a factor at all. In fact, people can freely take a bunch of slips with them. They only count what’s in the envelopes. Exit polls are exit polls, talking to folks as they leave. So no, the slips of paper that are left are irrelevant because who knows how many were there to begin with?

It costs the Israeli economy millions of $s or shekels. I would suggest only a few hours off work to allow everyone to vote, if anyone would listen:)
To answer you Ann, I picked a few slips and put in my purse for souvenir. So it doesn’t mean anything to see which pile is lowest. They probably get replenished. Also I believe the voting box gets emptied during the day a few times and the votes are counted, so, at 10 pm when they close, they have close to a total and accurate count.

Actually, the box are sealed until the voting is over. Only at 22:00 (or 20:00 for very small voting places) they open the voting box and start counting the votes. We usually get most of those votes counted by the following morning. People how voted in double envelopes take a little longer to count.